End of the road for hoverboards in colleges
Many universities ban ‘potentially dangerous’ self-balancing gadgets
One of the holiday’s hottest presents is now considered contra band at many US colleges.
At least 20 universities have banned or restricted hoverboards on their campuses in recent weeks, saying the twowheeled, motorized scooters are unsafe. Beyond the risk of falls and collisions, colleges are citing warnings from federal authorities that some of the self-balancing gadgets have caught on fire.
“It’s clear that these things are potentially dangerous,” said Len Dolan, managing director of fire safety at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. The public school of 14,000 students issued a campuswide ban effective on Monday, telling students in an email that any hoverboards found on campus would be confiscated.
“These things are just catching fire without warning, and we don’t want that in any of our dorms,” Dolan said.
Outright bans also have been issued at schools such as American University and George Washington University, both in Washington. Other schools said they will forbid the scooters in dorm rooms or campus buildings, a policy adopted at colleges including Louisiana State University, the University of Iowa and the University of Arkansas.
After banning hoverboards from dorms in December, officials at the University of Hartford in Connecticut are now considering a full ban because of concerns over how to store them safely, said David Isgu, a school spokesman. Some of the reported fires have occurred while the boards were being charged, authorities say.
At Ohio State University and Xavier University in Cincinnati, students were told they can bring a hoverboard only if it came with a seal showing that the board meets certain safety standards.
Bryce Colegrove, a sophomore at Shawnee State University in Ohio, got an e-mail from his school on Tuesday telling students to leave their